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I will never understand how this trend started in the first place. If you look at e.g. digital cameras, they all have touch screens these days, but they also st
by jetrink 7y ago
I will never understand how this trend started in the first place. If you look at e.g. digital cameras, they all have touch screens these days, but they also still have buttons and dials everywhere. The one in front of me has eight physical buttons, seven dials and a power switch. The reason is obvious: when you're taking photos, you don't want to be looking down at a screen; you want to be focused on the task at hand and aware of what is happening around you. If camera designers know this, why don't automotive designers, where the task at hand is a matter of life and death?
- sneak 7y agoI can only conclude from the situation you describe, as well as the fact that most cameras (as cameras, not phones) still lack GPS and sometimes Wi-Fi, that a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores. Most modern car interior controls are horrible (Tesla’s giant laggy touchscreen included).
- thedance 7y agoWhy do I need my camera to have GPS? In what situation would I be equipped with a camera and not my phone, which certainly has a GPS? This seems like the same instinct that makes OEMs put mobile modems in laptops, as if I would ever have my laptop but not my phone to which to tether it.
- outworlder 7y agoEXIF tagging.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoBecause you would want your photos to be geotagged. Also, whenever you are starting a sentence such as "In what circumstance..." and making blanket assertions, it's better to take a step back and question if other people's circumstances are radically different from yours. That's what good product thinking is about.
- zchrykng 7y agoGPS in the camera is handy for auto-tagging the location of the photos. Which is nice for when on trips.
- thedance 7y agoThanks. I am familiar with why you want location data in photos. I am not familiar with any justification for why this data cannot be acquired from my mobile.
- wl 7y agoIf I'm using a standalone camera, I don't want to be fiddling with other devices just to get geotagging working.
- ghaff 7y agoIt possibly could be done in real-time using Bluetooth but I doubt it would be reliable and remember that higher end cameras might be writing out images at maybe 6+ frames/second. Alternatively you can make a point of recording a track on your phone (which tends to be hard on the battery life) and then syncing them up later. But, as someone who has done this, it's a pain in the neck.
- ferongr 7y agoGeotagging on my X-T3 with the Camera remote Android app is very reliable to be honest. And you don't have to query the phone at the same rate as you're taking pictures, it's perfectly sane to assume the same location for 5-10 seconds during a burst.
- ghaff 7y agoFair enough. Though I'm not sure I'm convinced that, today, you're not just better off putting a GPS receiver in the camera. GPS is a bit hard on battery life but with the bigger batteries in these cameras, I'm not sure that's much of an issue. (And of course you can turn it off.)
- jki275 7y agoNot everyone carries a phone, let alone a smartphone. Not everyone wants to. Geotagging pictures is a very important use case for a professional photographer, and relying on the user to provide GPS through another device is not advisable. Also phone location services may not work very well without a cell signal, and not everyone takes photos only within range of a cell tower.
- wtallis 7y ago> This seems like the same instinct that makes OEMs put mobile modems in laptops, as if I would ever have my laptop but not my phone to which to tether it. A cellular radio in a laptop gets access to better antennas and a vastly larger battery than what's found in a smartphone.
- thedance 7y agoThe combination of the batteries in my phone and my laptop is clearly more capacious than the battery in the laptop alone.
- munificent 7y ago> a great many industrial designers are trend-following, uncreative bores. More likely that the executives above them who are watching what sells and what doesn't are.
- gkfasdfasdf 7y agoLaggy? The Tesla Model 3 touchscreen is anything but. I had many reservations about the touchscreen prior to ownership, however I don't really have any complaints now. You get used to it, Tesla's specifically is not laggy, and most critical stuff is on the steering wheel/stalk anyway.
- xedeon 7y ago> Tesla’s giant laggy touchscreen included This is false, full stop.
- koheripbal 7y agoTouch screens are cheap and very easy to develop for. They also de-couple the software development from the device development. It also allows updates and changes after the car is in production.
- avs733 7y agolower parts count as well. More commonality possibilities between vehicles are possible. the ability to add and remove features at different prive points without having to add/remove as many physical parts is huge. They price compete on bolts and screws...removing a button is a huge cost savings when multiplied by you Munro and Associates is a company that does reverse engineering and costing work and it's wildly interesting to learn about: https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-company-that-tears-cars-apart-to-find-o-1787205420 https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-company-that-tears-cars...
- bonestamp2 7y agoYa, Volvo has gone to a unified interface for their whole lineup. The standard stuff can be controlled with a few knobs and buttons and all the minor differences between models and trim levels are controlled on screen. I'm sure it saves them a ton since the part count would be very low now. They've done a pretty good job at it too, but it needs to be customizable to be great. If I ordered the surround camera option, I want that to be easy to access, not buried a few gestures deep. Chrysler nailed it, they let you rearrange the touch screen icons and have a bar along the bottom where you can put items that are always visible. They also have more buttons and dials.
- avs733 7y agoI would think that would be where good context aware software would come into play. Shouldn't it just automatically show the surround camera when I am in reverse or in some parking mode? I feel like that could be a setting or a soft button that appears when appropriate.
- 7y ago
- bob1029 7y agoAutomotive designers are simply catering to their perceived marketplace in order to realize maximum profit extraction. Most people who drive would prefer to be insulated from the activity as much as is legally possible. Fly-by-wire everything, touch interfaces, etc. This is how you achieve that objective. These "innovations" are obviously the antithesis of safe. But, we all know money is more important than safety, and most consumers are attracted exclusively to this kind of shiny bullshit.
- munificent 7y agoI think there's too much selection bias for this analogy to be particularly strong. Digital cameras are increasingly a niche product that exist mainly to cater to people who specifically want a the "SLR" user experience. If you just want to take decent enough photos, your smartphone's camera today is better than most prosumer DSLRs from like five years ago. I don't think today's DSLRs have the form factor that they have because it's objectively more usable. It's just the form factor that their self-selected customers want. One piece of evidence in favor of that is that all DSLRs do have big LCD screens on the back and often require a lot of menu diving to access any functionality that didn't exist in cameras before the digital revolution. There's still a physical dial for switching modes even though that's not something you actually change that often. Meanwhile you often have to dig into a menu or go through crappy buttons to do things like delete a photo. I won't go so far as to describe it as fetishization, because I think that's unfairly critical. But I do think a camera UX designed from first principles purely for usability would not have the same physical controls as a typical DSLR.
- KineticLensman 7y ago> I don't think today's DSLRs have the form factor that they have because it's objectively more usable. It's just the form factor that their self-selected customers want. One piece of evidence in favor of that is that all DSLRs do have big LCD screens on the back and often require a lot of menu diving to access any functionality that didn't exist in cameras before the digital revolution. So on my seven year old Nikon D3s I can use buttons to focus and change the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, WB, focusing mode and focus selection point all the while keeping my eye to the viewfinder. I would almost never look at the rear screen except to check the always-on histogram if the lighting radically changed. This means I can react instantly during a sequence of shots without even thinking about the menu system. It is not just 'what I want' but a massive amount of directly accessible usability and configurability. Going into the menu system would almost never be necessary during a typical shoot. The D850 I recently upgraded to is pretty much the same. I use the live-view screen on the D850 when shooting video but use the viewfinder and buttons (as above) when shooting stills.
- 7y ago
- SilasX 7y agoYeah, that’s what I hate about taking pictures with their iPhone, the lack of a tactile button for taking the shot. It’s especially bad when you have to photograph without a view of the screen. (So that you don’t guess, I mean when photographing the back of my head or the inside of a tight crawl space when my cat got inside.)
- bitcurious 7y agoFYI the volume buttons work as shutter buttons when using the native camera app.
- SilasX 7y agoOh nice, thanks!
- three_seagrass 7y agoDoes the iPhone not allow double-tap of the power button to start the camera? Volume buttons should work as a shutter button to take a photo.
- jki275 7y agoI don't think it does anymore. You have to activate the screen and slide left to get the camera. The volume buttons still work for the shutter though, which I use all the time.
- bartread 7y agoI think because cars, although primarily a form of transport, are often also a fashion accessory, or a statement of who you are (or aspire to be). And touchscreens are very fashionable[1]. Cameras aren't really like that. Nowadays if you've actually bought a camera as opposed to just using the one in your phone you're probably at least a little bit into photography, and in that context the function matters more than the form and style. [1] I'll grant that cost, along with simplicity of reconfiguration via software, may also be factors.
- izacus 7y agoThey make cars significantly cheaper to produce - both in terms of parts and construction time. Evey button you lose is a button you don't have source and install when building the car. There's less wiring, less replacement parts to stock. It's a win in all kinds of situations for the manufacturer. It's no coincidence that the company with most manufacturing issues - Tesla - also went with completely touchscreen based cabin with pretty much no additional cost. This is further confirmed by the fact that they didn't offset the screen issue by installing a projected HUD display (which is these days available in most 20.000$ cars) - it's complicated to install.
- bialpio 7y agoThe cost argument should also apply to the camera manufacturers and yet they have enough common sense to not make decisions that (to me) are user-hostile. Teslas are in a different boat - it seems that whatever they do, people will still line up to buy their stuff, at least for the time being.
- avianlyric 7y agoFor consumer cameras it definitely has happened. But for professional DSLRs you’re serving are market that absolutely puts function over form, and will happy pay a big premium for a devices that makes them more productive. Much easier to justify the extra cost of switches when you know your customers will happily pay a premium for them.
- natch 7y agoI suspect you’re assuming too much about Tesla buyers. You are overlooking the possibility that the product is actually good.
- bialpio 7y agoIt's all subjective, to me the touch screen on Model 3 is a deal breaker - I don't want to make this big a compromise for something this expensive. Other people have different utility functions, but from my perspective it seems that part of the reason to buy it is Tesla hype. It's a car, it moves me from point A to B, it gets stuck in the traffic exactly like everyone else's car, am I really getting ~$10k more worth out of it compared to other products?
- unethical_ban 7y agoI just got a new camera, and the touchscreen wonderfully compliments the three dials I have. They have several physical shortcut buttons to back out of menus and to get to quick actions more quickly. Tactile feedback and quicker response time on certain actions is amazing, and just using the camera is a blast. My 2014 mazda has some touch functions, but the main radio controls and the entire climate interface are all still knobs and buttons. The clock is separate from the entertainment screen. I love it!
- pacetherace 7y agoIn the 90s and 2000s, cars had too many buttons and knobs. And car reviewers started using that as a criterion to judge the dashboard. So less became better. OCD!
- WhompingWindows 7y agoIt started with the iPhone and the software-ization of all buttons. Buttons were seen as the enemy, inflexible blackberry relics of the 1990s. Tesla took this trend and ran with it, and many other cars, like my 2008 Prius, had already begun with their incredibly crappy touch-screen. Mine broke years ago and the audio is ENTIRELY on the front-right speaker. It can not be changed ever because ONLY the touch screen can change sound balance and touch screen's broken. Welp, at least my co-pilot has ideal audio?